Earlier this week, according to WHAS-TV in Louisville, you predicted that it will be “a lot harder” to repeal President Obama’s health-care law. Why is that the case?

Well, I don’t know how they got that comment out of what I had to say. Let me give you my view, clearly and unambiguously. Repeal of Obamacare will be the first item up in the Senate if I am majority leader. If we have a president who will sign the bill, we will do everything we can to get it off the books, and we’ll be looking for every angle that could be pursued. There has been a lot of talk about reconciliation. The Chief Justice said this is a tax, and we take him at his word, so that certainly makes this eligible for reconciliation. But that may not be the only avenue that we pursue. Our goal will be to get it off the books. In my view, it is the single worst piece of legislation that has been passed in modern times, and I’ve said that on numerous occasions. It’s still my view. And just because the Supreme Court has decided it is constitutional doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do…

On a final note, what’s your message to conservatives and tea-party activists who are suspicious of Republican leaders and their commitment to repeal?

Boy, I don’t know how they could be suspicious on this issue. Every single Republican in the House and Senate voted against Obamacare. I must have made 125 speeches about it on the floor. If there is any area where I don’t think conservatives of any stripe should be concerned, it would be this one. We’ve been clear and unambiguous about Obamacare from the beginning to the end — all of it. And I led the fight in the Senate, so I know what I’m talking about.

***

ObamaCare has been a war over the processing of insurance claims. It has been fought by institutional interests representing insurance, hospital and pharmaceutical firms. The doctor-patient relationship, or what used to be called “the practice of medicine,” has sunk beneath these waves.

Barack Obama, a savvy pol, understood from the start that rationalizing payments claims through the maw of these private and public bureaucracies was not what the average person thinks of as “health care.” To any normal person, health care means that when you or yours get really sick, the doctors and nurses who attend to you will push all else aside to give you medical help.

Mitt Romney needs a way to talk about health care in America. This isn’t just a fight over insurance companies. It’s about the people at the center of health care—doctors. The Affordable Care Act will damage that most crucial of all life relationships, that between an ill person and his physician.

***

The fact is that the incentives in our health-care system are all screwed up precisely because of government policies and programs. Medicare, the biggest player in our insurance system by far, is an arcane fee-for-service system that encourages volume over value and inflates (while shifting) costs. Medicaid, meanwhile, has a state-federal structure that makes cost-containment nearly impossible (by having state policymakers make spending decisions while the Feds pay at least half the cost in an open-ended way). And the tax exclusion for employer-provided coverage creates a huge incentive for high-premium insurance while shielding everyone involved from actual prices and costs. All the incentives point to cost inflation and away from outcome-based health economics, so we shouldn’t be surprised to have an inefficient system.

It is precisely conservative reformers who have proposed to change this, and it is precisely liberals who seek to avoid that change. Obamacare doubles down on all of these sources of inefficiency, and it does so on exactly Zakaria’s premise: that the chaos of the market would make things less efficient and only the centralized coordination of a benevolent bureaucracy can make the system work. It’s hard to believe we are still having this argument.

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“It would have been nice for the Supreme Court to repeal it for us,” he said, “but it’s no harder today than it was the day before the decision. We win, we repeal. It’s just that simple.”
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Good gawd,this train-wreck,has been going on since,
the Infamous 2010 Elections!

Barry has scheduled a speech tomorrow morning after the June job number is released. He must have been given advanced notice that it is not as bad as was feared,(today’s private sector new job number hinted at that), and he will crow and take credit.

These buffoons known as the American Voters are not going to sit up and pay attention til their wallets have been ransacked in pursuit of ObamaCare. No wonder the mandate wasn’t scheduled to kick in til AFTER the elections…the sheep wouldn’t know what hit them until it was too late, and OStupid would get his second term. Sheep –> “Oh, well, I didn’t know that it was going to be this bad.”

Stupid people who don’t pay attention make me want to grind my teeth to nubs. And it grates me to no end that we’re all going to be punished for their stupidity and inattentiveness.

OT: It was 102 degrees here with miserable humidity. I have the AC set at 68 and it has been running nonstop but the temp inside has been hovering between 78-80, just taking the edge off. How is everyone else faring?

OT: It was 102 degrees here with miserable humidity. I have the AC set at 68 and it has been running nonstop but the temp inside has been hovering between 78-80, just taking the edge off. How is everyone else faring?

OT: It was 102 degrees here with miserable humidity. I have the AC set at 68 and it has been running nonstop but the temp inside has been hovering between 78-80, just taking the edge off. How is everyone else faring?

OmahaConservative on July 5, 2012 at 10:44 PM

It was supposed to break for us today but tomorrow is going to be hot, humid but with storms and that is supposed to be the end.

OT: It was 102 degrees here with miserable humidity. I have the AC set at 68 and it has been running nonstop but the temp inside has been hovering between 78-80, just taking the edge off. How is everyone else faring?

OmahaConservative on July 5, 2012 at 10:44 PM

The lake is perfect, cool and refreshing. And the scenery…. O_O….of yes the scenery on the passing boats.

OT: It was 102 degrees here with miserable humidity. I have the AC set at 68 and it has been running nonstop but the temp inside has been hovering between 78-80, just taking the edge off. How is everyone else faring?

OmahaConservative on July 5, 2012 at 10:44 PM

Here in Idaho City, ID, We don’t have much in the way of humidity, the day has been a glorious 90+ (I like hot weather) and the night time temps will be 45 degrees.

OT: It was 102 degrees here with miserable humidity. I have the AC set at 68 and it has been running nonstop but the temp inside has been hovering between 78-80, just taking the edge off. How is everyone else faring?

OT: It was 102 degrees here with miserable humidity. I have the AC set at 68 and it has been running nonstop but the temp inside has been hovering between 78-80, just taking the edge off. How is everyone else faring?
OmahaConservative on July 5, 2012 at 10:44 PM

Hot, hot, hot here in Virginia (Hampton roads area). We hit 97. We didn’t have the AC as low as you, but I’m not looking forward to next month’s electric bill. I did manage two short bike rides today tho. :)

Barry has scheduled a speech tomorrow morning after the June job number is released. He must have been given advanced notice that it is not as bad as was feared,(today’s private sector new job number hinted at that), and he will crow and take credit.

bayview on July 5, 2012 at 10:37 PM

Yeah, I saw that too. It must be a pretty decent jobs report tomorrow. The dude has been on a pretty lucky roll lately.

That’s why Mitt needs to make it a “conflict of visions” campaign, not just a tit for tat on this or that economic data. It has to be an overarching theme about big vs small govt and individual liberty vs command economy.

Hot, hot, hot here in Virginia (Hampton roads area). We hit 97. We didn’t have the AC as low as you, but I’m not looking forward to next month’s electric bill. I did manage two short bike rides today tho. :)

conservative pilgrim on July 5, 2012 at 10:52 PM

We don’t even have AC. We open the windows at night, then shut them in the morning. Log house –> Thermal mass, gotta love it!

And my question is always the same. If Obama passed the greatest health care bill ever, why hasn’t Medicaid and CHIP been scraped? Why should I be mandated to pay for insurance for my family and then be forced to pay for another person’s insurance? If they and/or their parents can;t pay for their insurance, that’s their problem now. They are mandated by the same law as I am.

OT: It was 102 degrees here with miserable humidity. I have the AC set at 68 and it has been running nonstop but the temp inside has been hovering between 78-80, just taking the edge off. How is everyone else faring?

OmahaConservative on July 5, 2012 at 10:44 PM

You just described about 10 months out of the year in Texas. The A/C only goes off when it gets cold the other two months. You probably don’t have teradactyl sized mosquitoes that can drain more blood than Barnabas Collins.

Romney seems to be in it to win it (unlike McCain), so maybe he will go for it.

conservative pilgrim on July 5, 2012 at 10:56 PM

I used to think this too, but I’m not so sure now. Romney sure has been flat-footed the last couple of weeks. He’s been on defense over immigration, outsourcing and now he’s a mess on the mandate/tax issue. I’m supporting him 100%, but it seems he’s been pretty passive lately.

I am amazed at how many people talk about ObamaCare as if the Gov has our best interest at heart even though they are going about it all the wrong way. (some of the HA crew included). That’s far too generous a description.

There is nothing benevolent about ObamaCare!! Why are they [the gov & unions]exempt? It has ZERO to do with improving our lives. The ONLY purpose of the ACA is to subjugate the populace with promises of free candy and ever-lasting gobstoppers for all. Sad really that so many ‘adults’ fall for it like a 4yr child just days before Christmas.

Where are you Pilgrim? I moved to Austin last Labor Day. Ptown boy, born and bred (not my fault).
KCB on July 5, 2012 at 10:55 PM

Hampton Roads area–NN, Hampton, VaBeach, Norfolk, etc. Being by the water gives us a breeze, but not today. I spent a summer in Dallas during college and that was enough for me. Walking out to the mailbox was like going to the pool. I guess you get used to it. That kind of humidity is not for me!